June 21, 1905: Jean-Paul Sartre born.
Tuesday, June 21, 2016
Monday, June 20, 2016
Q&A with Ellen Prager
Ellen Prager is the author of the new middle-grade novel Stingray City, the third in a series for kids called Tristan Hunt and the Sea Guardians. Her other books include The Shark Rider and The Shark Whisperer. She is a marine scientist, freelance writer, and consultant, as well as the science advisor to the Celebrity Xpedition in the Galapagos Islands.
Q: How did you come
up with the idea for the settings and themes for this third book in your Tristan Hunt series?
A: Even while finishing the second book in the series, The
Shark Rider, I was already thinking about book three; the locations and marine
life I wanted to integrate into the story, and ideas for the plot.
Part of what I look for are wondrous natural settings that
readers can potentially go to or learn more about online and that provide
numerous undersea habitats to explore, some excellent sea creatures to feature
as well as opportunities for humor. Both Monterey Bay where the book starts and
Grand Cayman where the bulk of the story takes place fit my needs perfectly.
As for themes for the third book, in general I look for
real-world important ocean issues and in this case chose two topics that have
been in the news lately: the global problem of illegal fishing and how in some
places in the world it is still legal to capture (or kill) wild dolphins and
whales.
In addition, while in Grand Cayman doing location research
for the book, I visited Stingray City with ocean advocate, painter, and
scientist Guy Harvey.
He told me a story about how several years ago stingrays
went missing from Stingray City. They had been tagged during an annual survey
and were later discovered in a local marine park. The kidnapped stingrays were
released and in Grand Cayman it is now illegal to capture or kill sharks and
stingrays. For potential readers of Stingray City - that’s not a spoiler!
Q: As a marine scientist, can you say more about the issues you
try to make young readers aware of in your Tristan Hunt books?
A: In addition to highlighting many of the absolutely
amazing animals in the sea and marine habitats, I try to bring real-world ocean
issues into the stories. These are serious problems that impact the ocean today
and will continue to do so into the future.
Young readers can have a powerful voice now with their
parents, peers, and teachers and they will have to tackle problems such as
overfishing, marine pollution, coral reef destruction, climate change, and
wildlife smuggling well into the future.
Q: How did you initially come up with the idea for your character Tristan Hunt, and did you know from the beginning that you’d be writing a series about him?
A: When parents and educators starting asking me for an
ocean-oriented book targeting middle graders (8 to 12 years old), I did my
homework to see what kids that age like to read. The results were very clear -
fun fiction and preferably a series!
With that in mind, I began writing the Tristan Hunt and the
Sea Guardians series. The main characters, including Tristan, are based on some
of the typical emotions and insecurities we all have, but that are especially
heightened as a young teenager. I also added to these characters and others in
the stories personality traits of people I know or have met.
Q: You’ve written for various age groups. Does your writing
process differ depending on the age of your reader?
A: Definitely! However, more than age, the real difference
in my writing process comes if I am writing fiction (Tristan Hunt and the Sea
Guardians series) versus non-fiction.
In every case I try to stay focused on my audience: What
they are interested in? What can they relate to? And what level of
understanding I am writing for.
In writing fiction, I enjoy being more creative and
showcasing my sense of humor. I tend to use storytelling in both non-fiction
and fiction, but I thoroughly enjoy being able to “make things up” while
writing fiction and include sarcastic humor (my favorite part along with the
adventures and sea creatures). I also like coming up with villains that have a
humorous slant.
Some of the adventures the characters have or situations
they find themselves in are loosely based on my own experiences.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Right now I’m busy giving talks, visiting schools, and
trying to find sponsors for some of my ocean education and outreach work that
doesn’t fit traditional funding models for science. I’m also working on a book
that may be the first in a new series for middle graders.
And I continue to work with Celebrity Cruises as the science
advisor and consultant to their three ships in the Galapagos Islands (they
recently purchased two small ships in addition to Celebrity Xpedition, which
has been operating in the Galapagos for years).
I feel incredibly fortunate that I get to repeatedly go to
the Galapagos and work with our local crew to showcase the amazing wonders of
the islands in an environmental-award winning program.
I am also headlining some Caribbean cruises, which is a
fantastic way to reach broad audiences and make ocean science understandable,
relevant, and entertaining!
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: While I am very proud of the traditional jobs I’ve had in
science including doing research, teaching, and in administration, the response
of young readers, parents, and educators to my middle grade fiction series has
been one of the most rewarding experiences of my career.
With a small publisher, getting the word out about the
Tristan Hunt series has been difficult and it has yet to be profitable, but it
remains a labor of love!
I look forward to continuing my efforts to find new and
effective ways to bring ocean and earth science to people of all ages and make
it relevant, engaging, and understandable!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
Sunday, June 19, 2016
Q&A with William Anderson
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| William Anderson, photo by Dianne Larson |
William Anderson is the editor of the new book The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder. His many other books include Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Biography and A Little House Sampler. He is based in Michigan.
Q: How did you select the letters that appear in the new book?
A: The Wilder letters are scattered widely. Many are in
the collections of the museums set up at the book sites of the Little House
stories. Some are in private collections. Universities and libraries hold
scattered correspondence.
The bulk of the Wilder papers--including most of Laura
Ingalls Wilder's letters---are at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library in
West Branch, Iowa.
Q: You’ve studied Laura Ingalls Wilder for many years. Did
anything in these letters particularly surprise you?
A: Since I had read and quotes from many of these letters in
the process of doing books like Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Biography, I was already
quite familiar with them. This aided in organizing and selecting the
letters when I planned the compendium of correspondence.
Q: What are some of the themes that you see running through
the letters?
A: I see that Wilder was an astute businesswoman, dealing with
her agent and publishers. She was likely coached at first in this regard
by her daughter Rose Wilder Lane. Lane was an old pro in the publishing
world when Wilder first started publishing books.
Other letters detail the collaboration between Wilder and
Lane during the writing of the Little House books. They shared ideas, material
and writing strategies. To a lesser extent Wilder was a mentor to her
daughter, who was writing top paid short stories and best selling books during
the same era that the Little House books were being developed.
In her letters to her husband Almanzo, the reader senses the
deep love and companionship between the two.
And in her letters to multitudes of readers, Wilder was
consistently cordial and warm-hearted in replying to fans.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I am working on several non-fiction picture books for
young readers.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: The Selected Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder is now on an
excellently produced audio from Harper Audio.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
Saturday, June 18, 2016
Q&A with Hugh Howard
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| Hugh Howard, photo by John Dolan |
Hugh Howard is the author of the new book Architecture's Odd Couple: Frank Lloyd Wright and Philip Johnson. His many other books include The Painter's Chair and Dr. Kimball and Mr. Jefferson. He was vice president of the New York Times Book Company and his work has appeared in a variety of publications, including The New York Times and Smithsonian. He lives in New Hampshire.
Q: Why did you decide to write a book about Frank Lloyd
Wright and Philip Johnson, and how would you describe the dynamic between them?
A: The reason I decided to write a book about the two of them
is that in doing research about something [else, I found that] in the early
1930s they had a complicated tete-a-tete to do with the International Show--it
got me interested.
They were at loggerheads. The young guy, the old guy, the
classicist and the romanticist. What really persuaded me was that neither of
these guys ever shut up! They talked interestingly, provocatively, they talked
about each other…
Q: Do you think each architect influenced the other in some
way?
A: If Frank Lloyd Wright were here, he would say [that Johnson] never influenced [him] at all. Then again, he said [architect Louis] Sullivan
didn’t either, though he was a mentor to him.
But I think it’s true that Wright in the great doldrums that
followed the bad publicity that followed his divorce—it was essentially the
late Victorian age, the early 20th century, it was enough to make
you persona non grata--his career went into a deep dive.
When the International Show came along [in 1932] it got his
fires going again…His career was in three stages—one was in part a reaction to
Mies van der Rohe and Gropius and others…Philip Johnson opened that door and
made Wright walk through it.
It is an overstatement when Philip Johnson says Fallingwater
is a reaction to the International Style—perhaps an overstatement, but it’s not
wrong.
Look at it the other way—oddly enough, Johnson’s principal
benefit from Wright was that after Wright’s death, he was able to dine out on
his relationship with Wright, and he did so. He made light of the tension
between them, but he came around to realizing that Wright was [one of the great
architects].
As far as whether Johnson’s work was influenced by Wright,
he was much the lesser architect, but ironically he wasn’t as influenced by Wright as
Wright was by the work Johnson brought to his attention.
Q: What are their legacies today?
A: Wright’s legacy is a very diverse one, not based so much
on people building an imitation Wright building—there is some of that, but it’s
not a rich vein of architecture. His influence is much more theoretical, abstract,
philosophical.
If you think about the open plan, everybody today has to
have a Great Room, it’s a descendant of the thinking of Wright and Henry Hobson
Richardson. It’s a powerful presence in the way we think about our homes today.
He was an environmentalist--a century ahead of the
environmental movement, he was talking about organic architecture. That appeals
to us at a time when we talk about sustainability and environmental concerns.
We have absorbed it, and it has an impact.
As for Johnson, late in Johnson’s life he was very eclectic
in the work he did. He was a facilitator for different architects.
At one point I wanted to call the book "The Master and the
Maestro." It’s clear that Wright was the Master. It’s clear that Johnson,
because of his curatorial association with MoMA…Johnson was the Maestro who had
a lot of influence in opening people’s eyes to the post-Modernist movement…
In that sense his influence was perhaps greatest as a
stylist and tastemaker, with his own work and as an advocate for a wide variety
of architects.
Q: You describe Wright's Fallingwater and Johnson's Glass House as “the two
most admired and discussed houses of the [twentieth] century.” How would you
characterize these buildings, and what do they say about each architect?
A: Fallingwater is most significantly an epiphany, an
architectural burst of genius on Wright’s part. He drew it out in a matter of a
couple of hours—[that story] is mostly true…
It speaks to Wright’s genius for doing the unexpected, like
the Guggenheim. When we think about wedding cakes, we think about the tiers ascending. Wright turned that notion on its head.
For Fallingwater, his assignment was for a waterfall
cottage. Wright built not a cottage with a pretty view of a waterfall, but he
decided to build the structure right on top of it. He grounded it on one bank
and extended cantilevers. The staircase is suspended over water.
It speaks to Wright’s imagination and his ability to connect
a house to a site. He really understood landscape. The Taliesins are also great
examples of that...
The Glass House—it’s fun to see it as a metaphor, there’s
not really a practical use, yet on visiting it it feels so livable, you could
imagine yourself living there.
It’s a transparent thing. Johnson was a transparent thing
too—he was what you saw, a funny, eccentric man. The house reflects a very
public look-at-me character that was quintessentially Johnson.
Q: You write that the two men “placed architecture at the
center of culture.” What do you see as the role of architecture in American
culture during the decades on which you focus in the book?
A: Essentially it’s 1920 through the turn of the [21st]
century. In that period…there was a growing consciousness among the middle
class particularly, how a house is important, how you want to live in an
independent and new sort of way.
The chances Wright and Johnson took informed that
dialogue…Johnson and Wright shaped the American imagination. Their impact was
gradual but significant. I’m not sure we’ve taken the measure of it yet.
Today, if you wander into the kitchen where an American family is
having dinner, it’s a rare household that can name five architects. Five painters? They could name five Impressionist painters, but that’s not true of
architecture, it doesn’t have that sort of presence.
That said, if you were to have a conversation at a typical
American [dinner table] the chances are that Frank Lloyd Wright’s name would
tumble out before anyone else’s…He speaks to some fundamental need about
shelter and maybe some aspirations about beauty. His sense of place is very
strong, and he conveyed that.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I think I’m going to write about Henry Hobson Richardson
next. I’m doing some early work on it. He was in many ways as great as Frank
Lloyd Wright [although his] name may not come up at those dinner-table
conversations. He was an immensely likeable man, and he designed many wonderful
buildings.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: The essence of the book is the dynamism of their
relationship. The way Wright and Johnson interacted informed the architectural
conversation for several decades, even after Wright’s death. They had fun; they
exchanged blows from time to time.
The larger point I like to make is that at the turn of the
20th century, Wright’s name was the name to conjure with in
American architecture.
At the end of the century, you’d probably see Philip Johnson
talking to Charlie Rose, or on the cover of Time magazine. Circa 2000, he was
America’s architectural talking head.
I tried, by talking about these two--they were bookends of
20th century architecture…they knew everyone else. I would like to think that the book tells
us a good deal about the history of American architecture in the 20th
century.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
Friday, June 17, 2016
Q&A with Lauren Tobia
Lauren Tobia is the illustrator of the children's picture book Double Trouble for Anna Hibiscus, a winner of the 2016 Children's Africana Book Awards. She has illustrated the other books in the Anna Hibiscus series, as well as several other children's books. She is based in Bristol, U.K.
Q:
How did you end up illustrating the Anna Hibiscus series?
A:
I ended up illustrating the Anna Hibiscus series almost straight from university
where I had studied illustration. My work was seen at my degree show by the
publishers Walker Books UK who originally published the Anna series.
I
was working in a chemist shop at the time trying to get my first commission. I
got the call when I was at work and almost fell off my stool!
Q:
As you've illustrated more books in the series, has your style changed at all,
or remained similar to the first book?
A:
I try to draw instinctively and not make my work “fit “ into a rigid “style”
but my drawing of Anna has changed over the years.
I
think the constant drawing of a set of characters naturally evolves them and as
I work in Anna’s world I add little bits to her house and gardens, etc.
You
may notice I have turned the house around in Double Trouble for Anna Hibiscus so
you can see the back of the compound and the vegetable garden and water pump.
I
have also worked with an amazing team of editors and designers at Walker Books
and have learnt so much from them along the way.
Q:
What first brought you into the field of children's book illustrations?
A:
I sort of fell into children’s illustration. My way of drawing and my sense of
humour seemed to draw me to children’s books. I experimented with so many
things during art school from bronze casting and 3D work to print, video and
enamelling, but after a while returned to my first love, drawing and
storytelling.
Q:
What are you working on now?
A:
At the moment my desk is full of pictures of farmyards and parks as I am working
on two series of books for Candlewick in the U.S. and Walker Books UK.
The
first will be a series of board books about a child exploring the park with his
grandma and going on a journey across town. The other series is about two small
children called Billy and Bee experiencing playschool and the farm …and lots
more adventures.
I
am also very excited as my first animal character book will be out in October! It
is called Can’t You Sleep Little Bear? It’s
written by Amy Hest and in it I got to not only draw bears but I also had a
chance to draw snowy forests--a bit of a change from hot African skies!
Q:
Anything else we should know?
A:
I will miss drawing Anna It was always exciting to find out what Anna would get
up to next and Atinuke is such a phenomenal writer. It was a joy to illustrate and
a marvellous opportunity to find out more about Africa and particularly West
African culture and textiles. Anna has been a massive education in so many
ways.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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